The Missles of October

It is frightening to me to realize that my students were either not born or still suckling when the Berlin wall fell. They never crawled under their desks during a civil defense drill. I'm challenged as a teacher to pull relevance into their lives to the threat of thermo-nuclear destruction.

I chose a lesson plan about the Cuban Missile Crisis and was immediately impressed with the wealth of information and student activities embedded within the website. What I learned in the process of delivering this lesson is that well-conceived, overly ambitious plans can easily fail if not adapted properly to fit the audience.

The critical issue to be delivered within this lesson is the Cold War had boiled to the point that two competing nations began to understand that the fear of Nuclear War was sufficient grounds to use diplomacy to solve a crisis. The bold stand taken by the Kennedy administration ultimately lead to detente, glasnost and perestroika.

I welcomed the overly rich listing of resources available within the plan provided. I found the student exercises to be lacking because they failed to properly place the source documents into the context of the assignment. For example Activity #1 placed the student in the role of a CIA analyst creating a brief for the President. The spy-plane photos were appropriate fodder, but two of the three text documents were ex-post facto analysis that only added confusion to the task.

I modified this lesson with my 5th & 8th period classes to make the main deliverable be the definition of the threat & delineating the five options available to JFK. In my 8th period class a compelling argument proceeded among the students regarding the risks associated with each of the options.

While we all wish we can find 'canned' lesson plans to suit our needs and fill our students', it becomes increasingly apparent to me that absorption, experimentation & modification is the only way to effectively reach all of your students

LESSON PLAN:
The World at the Brink: The Cuban Missile Crisis

by Tom Josephson
Enduring Understandings:

1. The conflict between Communism vs. Capitalism almost ended the world
2. Diplomacy can help resolve conflicts
3. The Superpowers came close enough to annihilation to begin to disarm

Essential Questions:

1. What led to the Soviets building Nuclear silos in Cuba?
2. Why was the USA so upset at the prospect of nuclear missiles in Cuba?
3. How was JFK's reaction to the missiles tempered by the embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs?
4. How did the Cuban Missile Crisis lead to detente, glasnost & perestroika?

NYS Standards:
SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARD 2: World History use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.
Economics

SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARD 4: Economics use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions to allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the U.S. and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity problem through market and non-market mechanisms.

ELA STANDARD 3: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation.

Resources:
Content:

1. Selected readings from RFK's "Thirteen Days"
2. Source documents from EDSITEMENT LESSON
3. Background Cold War info from EASE HISTORY: 'Cold War All' clip

Technology:

Computer lab time to digest source materials and create responses to essential questions and activities. If time allows conduct a debate and record for class notes podcast: Resolved: JFK's decision to blockade saved Capitalism. and/or Resolved: Khruschev's primary goal was to eliminate the USA's nuclear missiles in Turkey.

Activities:

1. Problem discovered: CIA Analyst briefing
2. Brother to Brother: What would you tell JFK to do if you were RFK?
3. Who blinks first? Describe how the crisis was resolved
4. Make a prediction: Does this crisis make the world safer?

This lesson plan was adapted from "The Missiles of October" from EDSITEMENT